Page:The nature and elements of poetry, Stedman, 1892.djvu/184

154 you the aspect of something in your line of vision: Its vibrations actually occur, the light and shape and color which constitute your impression are your personal sensations. But the vibrations which produce them are actually occurring, and the quality of the substance from which they emanate is operative,—unless, again, you choose to deny in toto the existence of matter,—and, after every allowance has been made for personal variation, if I move to your point of view, they will, so far as we can know anything, produce approximately the same effect upon my mind and upon yours. It matters not through and excite our spiritual perception of them. which of the senses impressions are received: sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch, all resolve themselves at last into spiritual feeling. Form, for example, appeals to the touch as well as to the eye. Note the blind Herreshoff, that skilled designer of the swift, graceful hulls of yachts and other cruisers. As his sensitive fingers passed over, and shaped, and reshaped his model, he had as keen a sense of the beauty of its lines as we have in seeing them. A poem, conveyed by touch to one congenitally deaf, dumb, and blind, will impress him only with the beauty of its thought, construction, and metric concordance; but in one who has lost his sight and hearing in mature years, and who retains his memories, it will excite ideas of Form and sentiment. sound and imagery and color. Moral and intellectual beauty is the spiritual analogue of that which is sensuous; but just now we